Category Archives: work

Kathleen and I went to a Moksha Yoga class on Monday, which was definitely an experience. Moksha Yoga, for those not in the know, is one of those hot yoga classes, so the yoga studio is about 37 degrees Celsius (or whatever-whatever for people who know Fahrenheit) (OK, fine, 98, but only because I’m looking it up already) (hey that’s, like, body temperature, trippy). Anyway, unsurprisingly, holy crap it was hot. I sweat a lot when I work out normally, so hot yoga was insane. My yoga mat was reaching slip-‘n-slide levels of wet. They advised you bring a full-sized towel, and I didn’t realize until I got there that it was to cover your yoga mat. Whoops! A lady actually did pass out, but the instructor reacted so well it just made me feel better. I’ve read about some hot yoga instructors being medically fuck-witted when it comes to passing out yoginis, but this guy was just swift and awesome.

I really liked the actual yoga practice. We did not do a hundred million sun salutations (I’m looking at you, Ashtanga Yoga), plenty of the hip stuff I love because I don’t actually need to do it, and we weirdly did three savasana/corpse poses (this is the “lying on your back chilling” pose). One at the very beginning, one in the middle, then the usual one at the end. It was really cool, and probably necessary to keep everyone’s heart rates down in that heat. Anyway, I would like to keep trying it, but I’m not sure if I can take the heat! I felt on the edge of dizziness a few times near the end, and my heart rate was getting up. It might be a matter of acclimation, or it might be a matter of ‘not meant for me’.

Bootcamp on Saturday! We’re on the SMU football field, which means stairs! And also, those terrible little bits of ground up tires they put on football fields that heat up in the sun! I seriously hate those tire bits. When you’re on your hands and knees, oh, how they burn! It wasn’t too sunny on Saturday, but near the end it started heating up. We did piggybacks, which I love. We also did some strange thing where we had to lie on our backs and hold ourselves in a V shape, with our legs straight up, reaching our arms towards our legs, with our shoulders off the ground, for as long as we could. If it sounds insane, that’s because it is. It’s also super-hard, and I totally held it for 3:33 minutes, the third best time! Whoo!

I must go out and census, soon. The weather has been so nice and hot, lately, it’s been good for walking around and being charming with people.

Started my fancy new job this week as a census monkey! Technically, my job is Enumerator, but that doesn’t really mean much. I feel that census monkey is a lot more evocative. Basically I just go to the doors of people who did do their censuses and point out that they didn’t do their census, hey, what should we do about that? I am, like, three days in, but it’s pretty good times so far; I like talking to strangers while holding a clipboard. I had to take a pretty hardcore privacy oath (6 months in prison!), so I can’t blog the undoubtedly exciting confidential information I’m gathering.

I managed to elbow Kickboxing Erika in the eye on Friday. I felt the squish and everything! Gah! I started pulling back at the last second, so it really wasn’t hard, thankfully. Earlier, she punched me bare-knuckled, full on the head. These were both during defensive drills, so it was fault of the strikee, not the striker. We were both just having a particularly stupid day. Stupid to the point of, during one drill we got halfway through then just stood there, staring at each other for a full thirty seconds because we couldn’t remember who went next.

My dad came up today, and for Father’s Day I made him put a basket and a rack on my bike. Haha, I have such a nice-looking bike, and the rack and basket came from a yardsale and are attached with metal tape stuff and look like total crap. Fun fact about me: about 90% of what I own was free, and also I have no aesthetic shame. “Concept? Matching? Whatever, if I get the bike for free, then I can afford leather boxing gloves. And an extra yoga class!”

I had a fun bike adventure that didn’t involve actually driving it at all! I always kept it locked to a tree behind my apartment, and I got home the other day and the tree had been cut down, and my bike was gone. The part of my brain that does logic said, clearly, the landlord had cut down the tree and put my bike somewhere safe and I just had to call him and everything would be cool. But the part of my brain that is frankly way more fun at parties immediately thought, holy crap, some thief loved my awesome bike so much they cut down a WHOLE TREE to get it holy crap! It was totally the logical first one, of course. The cool-ass part of my brain is never right. I’m pretty sure that’s reality failing to live up to my standards.

This is my favourite new title for a book. And there are several dozen books called Jane’s Fighting Ships, so I’m a pretty happy person right now. It really just has pictures of military ships, but the title is great. I’ve started work at the MMA Library! I like to imagine it’s actually a mixed martial arts library. Really, it’s the Maritime Museum on the Atlantic Library, where I am spending a few weeks hauling and unpacking boxes after their renovations. The boxes are all labelled MMA Library, and that excites me terribly. Now I really want to start a library dedicated to cataloguing sweet, badass moves. I think I would be uniquely qualified!

The job is fun! I get to tour the museum for free, which proves that I will take the least logical route to touring a museum (I toured the Art Gallery for free when I did library work for them, too). I also get the inside scoop on ghost stories! I learned that I know, like, way more about maritime issues than I thought I did. And now I know more! Sweet~

Moving boxes and hunching over books is invigorating, but hard on the back. I’ve been taking a few breaths to do Wheel Pose in the stacks when I start feeling too caved in. A quick stretch during physical work it totally legit, but it occurred to me that Wheel is probably one of the stranger looking poses to be potentially caught in at work.

Kickboxing update! I learned a sweet new kick on Tuesday. It’s a jump-back kick, or something, I didn’t catch the name. Basically you stand right in front of your opponent, touching him, then you leap back on your front leg and use that force to propel your back leg forward into a really hard kick. It feels great to do, it’s fast, and it works from punching range. It’s a little hard to control and definitely needs more practice, but I love it to bits. I was doing a snap kick, which was easiest, but Ray was demonstrating that you can do it with anything up to and including spinning back kick. I think I need to practice just leaping up and spinning all the way around with one leg before I try to add a kick on there.

Because of the ways we were kicking each other, I now have a perfect, round bruise on the top of my wrist, right where my watch sits. Just thought you should know, because my bruises are my precious children.

After about a month of rain, I finally bought rain boots. It has now stopped raining. Ya’ll can send me whatever cookies you like.

I had a conversation a few days ago that made me laugh. Jill and I were complaining about how, in Nova Scotia, it’s impossible to find a bottle of wine for under $9, even the stuff that’s on sale, and doesn’t that suck? After a pause, Jill was, like, “This is a real ‘developed world’ problem, isn’t is?” Anyway, that cracked me up, and I wanted to share it with all of you. And now I have. Bam!

Aw, this is my last update from this particular reference desk you folks will ever get! It is completely dead here, because exams are over and it’s the long Easter weekend. Let us hope I get even one question. But the memories! The memories of all my lovely questions! Oh, such cherishing.

I have had some good times in kickboxing this week, let me tell you. I got kicked in the face! It was a complete accident on Rosie’s part, of course, just a matter of missing the pad and hitting my jaw, but it was a hard kick and everything. It was during drills, not sparring, so it’s not like I messed up by not dodging or blocking. I was supposed to be in the kick’s way, just a foot and a half lower. Anyway, I am totally stoked over this. Kicked in the face = officially hardcore. Poor Rosie kept apologizing, because what else can you do after you kick someone in the face? I would feel completely horrible if I did that. But I got kicked, so I’m just aces. Anyway, my reaction immediately after the kick was strange. About five seconds of being completely fine, followed by thirty seconds of freaked-out pain, followed by being completely fine again. I think in a fight, I’d hit back during those immediate “completely fine” five seconds, and the adrenaline would carry me through the painful part. I know this is probably common knowledge, but it’s the first time it’s happened to me, so I’m all intrigued.

On Friday, we did a whole bunch of kicking. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I have a simple dream. That dream is to one day become Anderson Silva. (IN CASE IT’S NOT CLEAR, SILVA IS THE ONE WHO WINS THE FIGHT. THAT’S THE ONE I WANT TO BE.) As such, face-kicking practice on Friday was a crucial part of that goal. I mean, getting kicked in the face is badass, sure, but at a certain point I would like to win fights in very cool ways.

Bootcamp on Saturday morning! We did some insane thing called plyometrics. Wikipedia with it’s fancified letter-words doesn’t get across what plyometrics is, which is jumping. Jumping a lot, in strange, inhuman ways, while being assured that anyone can do anything for thirty seconds. A really hard one, but probably my favourite for the “fun factor”, are called rock stars (found as the first workout of this video). Seriously, you pretend to be a rock star, jumping as high as you can while whaling on your guitar. The arm motion is completely superfluous, it’s just good goddamned fun, because if you’re already jumping that high, then you might as well air guitar.

Went home for Easter dinner and had Easter dinner times. It was also part birthday dinner because my birthday is next week. Whoo! I got Easter chocolate and birthday chocolate. Pretty much the best day ever. I also got cool new sneakers, because working-out people are supposed to get new sneakers every six months and I’ve had mine for almost a year. And they were falling apart, too, so I guess it’s true. Anyway, mine are awesome and black and comfy and you guys, I have a confession, every time I get new shoes I imagine myself fighting crime in them. Cool black sneakers are sort of ideal, and big boots, but it gets a little ridiculous with, say, sandals or high heels. I started this habit pre-kickboxing, too, so we can’t even blame that.

Chilling on the desk. Man, things are winding down so fast, pretty soon you guys won’t be getting reference desk updates from me any more. And if I were a more together sort of person, I would actually know the date I finish and everything. I like to be surprised, OK? My life is a goddamned magical journey.

I fiddled with the my blog some more, and now I have a tag cloud (ooohhhh) and a blogroll (woooow). And I put the Archives way at the bottom, because fuck archives. Not the discipline, I’m cool with the discipline. I also have no specific hostility toward that class other people are in but I am not. But the box. On my page. That I feel obligated to have, but it’s throwing off my feeling of design. Man, fuck that box. Also, regarding the blogroll. There’s four of them for some reason, so there’s that. And, yes, I know I have a loose definition of the word “blog”, in that many of my links are not remotely blogs, by any stretch of the imagination, not at all. Anyway, I only inflicted one linguistics blog on you, and zero newsy-politics things, because this is a fun-times blog and I am a deeply insecure person.

In “punching things” news, I have been terribly slack this week because school classes are so close to being finished and homework is, like, so totally real, dude. I didn’t get to the club at all this week, as I am a huge lame-o. But this was the last week of Dal classes for a while, so I made sure to get there. We did piggyback calf-raises, which is my favourite way to do calf-raises. Then we learned how to dodge a round kick to the head, which meant your partner had to miss kicking you in the head, repeatedly. Holy crap, there is just no way to make that look graceful. Your leg goes way up high and then just sails away into the ether and you spin. At this point, apparently your best bet is one of those cool spinning back kicks because just why the fuck not? You have to salvage that stupidness by trying something extra-awesome, and you’re already spinning.

Attended a fancy drinks night and drank fancily. My contribution to food was Superstore sushi, because I suck like that. And sushi is awesome, even if it’s from the Superstore. Anyway, I said incandescently hilarious things that I can’t repeat here because I forget what I said, which I’m pretty sure is my brain is trying to protect all of you from me. (Every time I get close to remembering, I have a seizure. True story, by which I mean complete lie.)

I got that Firefox 4, which is kind of weirding me out. It switched around the “open link in new window” and “open link in new tab” buttons are on their right-click menu, and I don’t know if you guys know this about me, but I open pretty much every link ever in a new tab. So I keep opening things in new windows accidentally and crying in frustration and throwing things out the window and setting fires. Now I’m at work and everything’s backwards again and I’m messing up backwards. Pretty sure this is hell. If I were stubbing my toe and biting on tinfoil, it would definitely be hell.

We had partners yoga for Valentines, so Kathleen was my yoga valentine. I am really sucky at partners yoga, of course, but it is ridiculously fun. My problem is I tend to freak out as soon as my feet leave the floor when a person picks me up. I can give piggybacks until the cows come home, but I whine like hell if someone gives me one. Also, for all my badass pushups, I am bad at benchpressing a person. This must be fixed. Anyway, Shanna had a lot of fun making all the poses into two-person poses, she’s a cool instructor.

My grappling tournament is in, like, three days! My brother called me yesterday and said he wants to compete, too. Yay! I didn’t know he could grapple, his formal training is all in Karate Kenpo. But it turns out he has some informal grappling, and the tournament is open, so he’s coming in. He was worried he may go up against me, and was all, “I can’t get beat up by my little sister, I just can’t”, but men and women are separate (like God intended), so we’re good. So, now I’m imagining some comic-book scenario in which my brother and I fight crime. Or perpetrate it, I’m cool either way, I just want to wear a mask and have family time.

Other important grappling news! I finally got a recruit! I’m always trying to get, like, every woman I know to come to the women’s grappling class, and one of the ladies I bug finally came. Judy, from kickboxing class. Oh yeah, I’m gonna make a fellow MMA fighter, this will be awesome. Maybe we can fight crime. Really just looking to be Wolverine, here. This is how I assess every single situation I encounter.

Fun thing at work! I mentioned this article to my boss, about a legal guide to the apocalypse in New York, and he was all, “Hey, we should buy that!” So I actually led to a book being bought at the library. This is what being relevant feels like, my word. I’m just bragging here, you can ignore me.

Oh yeah, I also accidentally revealed today that I’m an alien spy, sent under deep cover. The problem, you see, is that whenever I try out a new hairstyle, I don’t really know if it’s a way humans actually wear their hair. So I had to ask if I had a human hairstyle today. I did, as it turned out, but the secret’s out. Now, to return to the lonely vacuum of space.

Wow, it’s apparently been a really busy week, because I haven’t updated since my last quiet Sunday shift. How time flies! Anyway, grappling today was super-awesome, made slightly less super-awesome by my teeny-weeny hangover. I seriously would not even have noticed it, except we were doing goddamned combat somersaults again. We barely ever do those, why do they always happen on the days after parties? I somersaulted like a champ for a while, but once we got to monkey-style (that really just the normal kind, which is the most dizzy-making, as it turns out, I’m now a somersault connoisseur), I had to stop halfway through. Just… just not worth the risk.

We ran out of time and the end, so no rolling today. But Jodie and I did get to slam each other into the mat a whole bunch, and in the end, isn’t that what matters? I learned how to do a two leg take-down! We also did an exercise called The Panther, which sounds really elegant and regal but when I do it just looks like crap. I like it anyway, because you sort of look like Spiderman climbing a wall.

Last night was a lovely party with lovely party people. At some point there may be a photo of me chugging wine straight out of the bottle. Please let it be known, this was for photo-op purposes only, I delicately sip my wine from the bottle like a lady. Other party shenanigans involved me at one point doing stomach crunches while eating potato chips. I also “learned” to play Settlers of Catan, by which I mean, I learned I am awesome at rolling dice, seriously, it is a gift. Also at some point I think I agreed to play water polo and submit an article to DJIM.

Night before that, out with kickboxers to say goodbye to Phil, who is leaving forever a few months to go to Mars England. These were different kickboxers than I’ve gone out with before, and it was just delightful. We went out right after kickboxing class, too, but at least with time to shower and change because I don’t really bring a change of clothes with me. The class was fun. We were doing, like, 100 jabs, 100 crosses, 100 uppercuts, 100 hooks. Gerald teased me about taking the ‘aerobics’ approach at first, and made me stop and punch like a fighter.

I had my second and, sniff, last Bollywood dance class on Thursday. Yeah, I was the only one to show up, not really the basis of a sustainable class. Dammit! There’s a flamenco class at the same time, I might go to that based on the sound principle of ‘why the fuck not?’ The last class was fun, anyway. It was like a private lesson with Monique! And then I raided her playlist, because she has the best music!

And before that, classes! Like, school classes, my first full week. I managed to already do one presentation, because I am a boring keener. The Business Intelligence class involves reading business news and talking about it in class 2-3 times in the term, which will almost certainly get me reading business news like a crazy person and bringing it up every week, because if there’s one thing I can do, it’s read the goddamned news like a competition. For reals, it’s like a ploy designed specifically to get me to read business news, only Shannon. My online class, Records Management, looks like it’ll be taking place in a classroom, where everyone chats online with the prof while she talks into a headset. The kinks are getting ironed out, is what I’m saying. I honestly kind of prefer classrooms, anyway, so whatever, brightside.

Now, I am at work. I went to throw out some trash, and they appear to have moved my trashcan. Seriously, where the hell is my poubelle? Also, I don’t know who that “they” is, I just know my trashcan didn’t move itself. This isn’t Beauty and the Beast. Or is it?